British magician Nick Einhorn stumped two of the world's most
foremost magicians — but now his secret's out.

In 2011, Einhorn performed on the TV show Penn & Teller: Fool
Us. The gist of the program is simple:
Magicians show off their best tricks in an attempt to
fool both the studio audience and famous comedy-magic duo.

Einhorn began on stage with three tables and
three covered dishes. Then he asked a random woman in
the audience to choose which dish would be placed on which table.
Next, the woman chose three random men as volunteers.
Finally, the woman assigned each man an envelope — either red,
yellow, or blue — and chose which table each man
would sit at. Then came the big reveal: Each man opened up
his envelope and read a statement that correctly guessed both
his name and which dish was on his
table.

"We were fooled. I mean, not a clue," Penn said to the audience
after Einhorn's trick concluded. "I mean, if you put a gun to my
head and said, 'Take a guess. How did he do it?' I would say,
'Tell my family I love them.'"

It works like this: The magician has six sets of envelopes — one
for each of the possible ways the dishes could be arranged on the
tables. Once he knows which dish is at each table, he picks
the corresponding set of envelopes. The next twist is that every
envelope contains the same message:

TABLE 1 READ THE FOLLOWING: A man by the
name of YOUR NAME will be seated at table number 1 and
will be having Chicken Tikka Masala

TABLE 2 READ THE FOLLOWING: A man by the
name of YOUR NAME will be seated at table number 2 and
will be having a Burger and fries

TABLE 3 READ THE FOLLOWING: Finally, a man
by the name of YOUR NAME will be seated at table number
3 and will be having Pizza

The magician knows which dish is at each table, and he
selects the set of envelopes that correspond with that
order. All that's left to do is make the volunteers read the
statements and insert their names — pretty tricky.